


Vacant Garments

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Series: Walls and Windmills [3]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Backstory, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Family, Friendship/Love, Gen, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tired, grieving, and emotionally drained from supporting Aunt Prudence after Arthur’s passing, Phryne is deeply touched when Jack makes a point of supporting her. But he has more weighing on his mind than simply paying his respects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Grief Fills the Room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sarahtoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarahtoo/gifts).



> For Sarah, for the prompt “Where does Jack go when he’s not at the station or at Phryne’s house? Does he have family? If so, would he introduce her, even if they’re not intimate (yet)?” Takes place after “Unnatural Habits” and before “Murder Under the Mistletoe”. Thank you to foxspirit1928’s detailed MFMM timelines for helping me to figure that out.

_Grief fills the room up of my absent child,_  
_Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,_  
_Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,_  
_Remembers me of all his gracious parts,_  
_Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;_  
_Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?_  
_– Shakespeare, King John_

“I’m terribly sorry, Inspector,” Phryne overheard Mr. Butler saying in the hall, “but I’m afraid Miss Fisher isn’t receiving guests today. There’s been a family upset and she’ll be departing shortly—”

“It’s all right, Mr. Butler,” she called from her desk. “Come in, Jack.” She attempted to school her face into a semblance of its usual order, but when she rose and turned to greet him, it was apparently all too obvious that she had been crying. “I’m a little out of sorts today, I’m afraid. Can I offer you a drink?”

“You seem to need it more than I do,” Jack said. His keen blue eyes, normally so suspicious and guarded, were soft. He stepped a little closer to her than was his wont; usually it was Phryne who had to close the distance between them. “Tell me what’s happened?”

Phryne took what she hoped was a calming breath. It shuddered in her chest. “I had a telephone call from Aunt Prudence, late this morning. My cousin Arthur...” Her lips began to tremble. “Passed away in his sleep last night.” The muscles of her face contorted sharply as she tried to control herself. And then she was sobbing, clutching a handful of Jack’s waistcoat and pressed against his chest, without knowing how she got there, so tightly she could feel the weave of his jacket imprinting into her cheek, and his hands were warm and solid and steady on her shoulder and in her hair.

“He’d always had a weak heart,” she explained to Jack, when she had cried herself out again, and completely soaked the lapel of his jacket and a large patch of his waistcoat. “The doctors prescribed all sorts of pills and tonics, but in the end there was nothing they could really do.”

Mr. Butler came quietly into the parlour, carrying a tray with fresh tea and sandwiches for Jack, and a small bowl of water and a face flannel for Phryne. Jack didn’t attempt to pull away from her in the presence of the servant, and she loved him for that. It was a simple thing, to acknowledge that she loved Jack, at least in her own mind. Right now, she loved a great many people, and wanted to cling to them all. She tightened her grip on his suit and nuzzled his damp chest, and felt his chin come to rest on top of her head.

They parted eventually, but only far enough to sit down, and while she was patting her eyes with the damp cloth, Phryne saw Jack surreptitiously move his chair an inch or two closer to hers. “Have a sandwich, Jack, I’m sure Mr. Butler made your favorite. He always does.”

Jack quietly piled the tiny tea sandwiches onto a plate, and then to Phryne’s surprise, held them out to her. “No, thank you.”

“Have you eaten anything at all today?”

“I... some toast?”

He raised his eyebrows, added three more sandwiches, and placed the plate on her knee. “Eat. You’ll be of no use to yourself or your aunt, otherwise.”

She ate the sandwiches, and drank the hot sweet tea he poured out for her, all the while marveling as though from very far away how solicitous and kind he was being. “I’m heading out to Aunt Prudence’s in a little while,” she told Jack. “With Guy and my mother away in England, I’m the only family she has here, and she’ll need my help. Dot and Mr. Butler will come out in a few days, to help get the house ready.”

Jack nodded. “Is there anything I can do?”

“...I’d appreciate a ride, actually,” said Phryne, with a hint of tired embarrassment. “I don’t really feel up to driving, right now.”

It was the perfect opportunity for a sly jab, and at any other time, he would have taken it. Instead, he allowed himself only a small quiet smile and a nod. “I’m at your service, Miss Fisher.”

Phryne finished her tea and then excused herself for a few minutes, so that she could go upstairs and change. The clothes she had put on that morning now seemed far too bright and light-hearted for her mood, and while normally she reveled in shocking and outraging her conservative aunt, now was not the time. Sober blacks and grays were what the situation called for.

She looked at herself in her full-length mirror, after she was done dressing. She looked smaller. Was it the lack of outward colour, she wondered, or the lack of inward vitality? And she forced herself not to think of Arthur, who had loved her wild outfits because, he said, they reminded him of rainbows. She washed her face and subdued her grief with makeup, and went downstairs.

Jack was waiting for her in the hall. “Mr. Butler’s already put your things in my car,” he said. “We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

He took her lightweight black coat from her hands and held it so that she could slip it on easily. His movements were thoughtful and deliberate, and practiced. It occurred to Phryne, like a punch to her vital organs, that he was no stranger to sudden deaths. He was an officer of the law, and policemen died every day. How many funerals had he attended since the end of the war, for colleagues and friends cut down in the line of duty? And what of family? He had never spoken to her directly of any relations at all, save for one late uncle, and all his brief mentions of his parents were in the past tense.

She turned, fastening the coat’s collar at her throat, and reached for his hand. “Thank you,” she said again, warmly. “I know this wasn’t how we had planned to spend our afternoon.”

His eyes seemed very bright. “It never comes in a convenient moment,” he replied huskily. He squeezed her hand, then reached for the door knob.

The drive out to Aunt Prudence’s vast sprawling house was uneventful. Phryne spent most of it alternating between looking dumbly out the window, or curled against Jack’s side. He didn’t appear to mind, and he was an experienced driver, well able on quiet roads to handle having one arm commandeered for other purposes.

For once, Prudence did not come bustling out of the house to greet them with complaints and demands. Only one or two of the staff were there, for the luggage. Phryne felt strangely bereft.

“Will you come inside?” she asked Jack, not wanting to lose the warm solid security of his presence just yet.

He opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it abruptly on whatever reply he had intended to make. When he spoke again, Phryne felt sure it was not what he had originally planned to say. “I wouldn’t want to intrude. And I doubt Mrs. Stanley feels well enough to receive guests yet...”

“Jack.” Phryne touched his arm, feeling the coolness of his overcoat beneath the ridges and whirls of her black moiré glove. “You’re practically family.”

A strange expression flitted through his eyes. Again, he seemed on the verge of accepting... and then shook his head. “I’d rather not, Phryne. I’m... not good... with other people’s grief.” He looked away and coughed sharply into his hand. “But please, extend my condolences to your aunt. And let me know when the funeral will be. I’d like to pay my respects to poor Arthur. He was a nice lad.”

Phryne felt the warning sting of hot tears, even as Jack’s words sent a soothing warm glow through her aching heart. “Of course,” she promised.


	2. Of All His Gracious Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the funeral, Jack brings Phryne to visit some of his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't intend to leave this story for so long. Apologies to those who have waited so patiently. :)

Phryne was altogether too glad to send Jack the date of Arthur’s funeral and have him turn up at the house, even if his appropriately solemn face and sober black suit did make her pause. She’d never seen him look quite so… elegant, even in black tie and tails at the theatre. They were not the right thoughts to be thinking at this moment, but they gave her a much needed moment of levity and a reason to smile. Her facial muscles seemed to creak from disuse as she greeted him. “Thank you, Jack.”

“Of course.” He took her outstretched hand and squeezed it, and then to Phryne’s deep pleasure, he kissed her cheek. “You look exhausted.”

“Oh good, then I look better than I feel.” She took his arm and leaned against his solid, steady frame for a moment or two. “It has been a difficult few days. Aunt Prudence has been completely distraught. Poor Arthur was the light of her life, especially since my uncle Edward passed away.” 

“So you’ve handled all the arrangements yourself?”

“For the most part,” Phryne said, with a tired sigh. “Dot and Mr. Butler have been a godsend, helping with the house, and Bert and Cec have driven Aunt Prudence and me all over town without complaint, and wouldn’t accept a penny in return.”

“They’re good fellows,” said Jack, not even a little begrudgingly. 

“They are… and they were very fond of Arthur.” She let out another sigh, a sound of bone-deep exhaustion. “I confess, I haven’t slept much since I came here. I haven’t been able to settle down enough. I feel like I’ve been living on coffee and tea sandwiches.”

“Hmm,” said Jack, understandingly. “Is there going to be much of a viewing?”

Phryne shook her head. “Aunt P didn’t try to hide Arthur, but he didn’t leave the estate much. The servants and the gardeners have all paid their respects, as have Aunt P’s friends. She wants the funeral to be just for family.”

“ _Oh._ ” Jack looked deeply embarrassed. “Miss Fisher, I do apologize, I thought—” 

“Jack.” She gripped his hand and looked up at him with a look that bordered on pleading. “I asked if you could come today. I said I needed someone I trusted.”

His eyes grew dark and warm and inexpressibly tender. “Trusted to what?”

She curled her hand around the lapel of his jacket. “…To not let me fall,” she said quietly. “I need to be strong for my aunt today, and... I don’t know if I can do it without help.”

There was a little sound, like Jack’s breath had caught in his throat. But he only smiled, though the expression looked somewhat strained. “Whatever I can do, Miss Fisher.”

She rode to the cemetery with Aunt Prudence, in the car behind the hearse, but as soon as she could she found Jack in the little crowd of mourners and didn’t let go of his arm until the service was over and Arthur was laid to rest beside his father and Janey, and Grandmother and Grandfather Morgan, and the baby boy that had come between Prudence and Phryne’s mother. She had thought she was all out of tears, but when she saw Jack stoop to speak to her poor aunt, the expression on Prudence’s face was one of such gratitude that Phryne had to get away. 

She went to where the cars were parked, put her arms on the roof of Jack’s car and dropped her head between them. She stayed like that for a long time, until the crunch of shoes on gravel alerted her to the presence of another person.

“Mrs. McNaster’s having Kip drive your aunt back to the house in her car. Should I take you back as well?” he ventured.

“God, no.”

“...Back to St. Kilda, then?”

She shook her head, or what he could see of her head. “Not yet. I just... need some time.” She felt his hand, warm, on her back. 

“I know the feeling,” he murmured. “There’s something I need to do... you’re welcome to come with me.”

“Does it involve murder?”

“...Not unless you’re planning to commit one?”

Phryne rolled her head back and rubbed her neck tiredly. “Honestly, right now all I’m planning to commit are indecent acts of sleep in my bathtub. But that can wait. Wherever you’re going Jack, I’m game.”

Where he was going, it transpired, was a Presbyterian cemetery. “You can stay in the car, if you like,” he said. “You’re exhausted...”

“The air and the movement will do me good.” She smiled, rather lopsidedly. “Besides, after everything you’ve done for me today... it’s the least I can do.”

They walked through the quiet grounds, arm in arm, not speaking, simply taking comfort from each other. Jack moved with a certain sense of purpose, and Phryne suspected he was there to visit someone. She could imagine, or begin to imagine, the kinds of memories that the day had stirred up, and she felt quietly warmed that he would trust her with something so private. 

When they stopped before a small cluster of stones, and she saw the names, she only hoped that this wasn’t the only family he had left to introduce her to.

Jack removed his hat slowly. “I can promise, Miss Fisher,” he said, unintentionally reading her thoughts, “if they were still among the living, I would have been compelled to introduce you long before now.” He bit his lower lip for a moment or two, composing himself. “I rather think my mother would have adored you.”

Phryne touched his shoulder briefly. “Any woman who managed to bring you up as well as she did is someone I would have been proud to know.” Her kindly-meant words won her a soft snort and a smile. Satisfied, she bent to read the plain inscriptions.

 _John Anthony Robinson_  
1864 – 1908

 _Sylvia Ann Faulkner, his wife_  
1869 – 1924

“Is your middle name Anthony?” It would certainly be appropriate…

Jack grimaced. “I wish it was.” He gestured to another headstone, more worn and old-fashioned. 

_Archibald Robinson_  
Born 28 December 1815  
in Edinburgh, Scotland  
Died 15 March 1892  
He has gone home. 

_Susanna Dalrymple_  
His Wife  
Born 1 August 1823  
Died 1 January 1870  
The Lord hath called and she hath answered.

“My grandparents. I was named for the old man. He died exactly two months after I was born.”

“On the Ides of March, no less,” Phryne grinned. 

“My life is simply shot through with Shakespeare,” Jack agreed dryly. “In fact, my father was responsible for my interest in Shakespeare.”

“Was he a great fan?”

“No. As a matter of fact, he never read any of Shakespeare’s plays or poetry and only ever saw one play performed. ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona.’ It was how he got the inspiration to woo my mother.”

Phryne dredged up what she recalled of the play. “‘What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?’”

Jack nodded. “Dad used to work late at Wertheim’s, the piano maker’s, and get home well after the kids’d gone to bed. Mum would sit up, doing mending and waiting for him. He’d call that line up from the street so she’d know when he was at the downstairs door, so she could let him in. I think that’s my earliest memory of my father.”

“Nineteen-oh-eight... how old were you when he died?”

“Sixteen,” said Jack softly. “Mum had great visions of me continuing on with my schooling and my music, but after Dad’s liver went... nephritis, the doctor said... I had to do something to support her and my sister, until—”

“Until you turned eighteen and could sit for the police examinations,” Phryne said, remembering what he had told her once before. 

He nodded again, his jaw tight. “I worked in the factory. Twelve, sometimes sixteen-hour days. Mum worked as well, doing mending. My sister—she’s four years younger than me—would do odd jobs after school, when she could get them. It wasn’t much, but it kept us all off of charity handouts.”

Phryne’s eye traveled to the multitude of little headstones that huddled close to the side of his parents’ grave. Lily, Florence, Elsie, Dorothy, Alexander, Amy, Charles, John... Two surviving children, out of ten, despite Jack’s parents clearly having been at least somewhat better off than her own. “Your parents had another son named John? Was he older?”

“...That’s not my brother’s grave, Phryne,” said Jack, very huskily. He crouched down and shifted a large, relatively fresh bunch of flowers so that she could read the inscription on the stone. 

_John George Robinson_  
Son of John A. and Rosemary E.  
18 June 1913  
Our Baby

He’d never said he had no children, not in so many words. Phryne thought back to the first time Jack had sat in her parlour, after he had fought with Welfare on her behalf. He had never told her how much of a struggle it was, to get them to turn over an abused teenaged girl to a wealthy spinster, ‘of questionable habits and morals,’ as her solicitor had later expressed it, but Phryne did know, and she had never been able to express her gratitude. He had said that evening, simply, “We were never blessed.”

“Stillbirth?” she asked, very quietly, so as not to intrude on his grief. 

“Miscarriage. Seven months. Rosie…” He broke off and bowed his head, holding his hand tightly over his mouth and jaw.

Phryne reached out to squeeze his hand. No wonder he had been so gentle with Aunt Prudence.

“It was the year after we married. He’d’ve been sixteen, this year.” Jack scrubbed his palm roughly over the lower part of his face, and then looked away from the small headstone. “Rosie was so... she took the loss like a good Christian. She was resigned. Outwardly, at any rate. She told me later that she felt like she had to be strong for me.”

“She’s a strong woman.”

“Yes,” he agreed, voice shot through with quiet respect for his former wife. “She is.”

 _Strong for me..._ Phryne had used those words herself, only a few hours before. “I watched my mother suffer through any number of miscarriages, as a child,” she said softly. “And I’ve had one. It’s never an easy thing for a woman to experience, particularly a late-term one... even when the child isn’t wanted.”

Jack looked at her with a question in his eyes. 

“René.” That was all she needed to say. His hand tightened on hers, but his expression was entirely unsurprised. And in that moment, she loved Jack so fiercely for that understanding, there was no room left for any other reason. 

“Don’t pity me, Jack. I was already preparing to pay to have my troubles taken away. Nature simply... got to me first.”

“I would never presume to pity you,” said Jack, quiet and serious. He reached out and laid a hand briefly on his son’s headstone, and bowed his head for a moment. This time, Phryne didn’t look away. 

Finally Jack let out a sigh, and rose to his full height. “If you’re not required back at your aunt’s house, Miss Fisher... would you like to have dinner with me?”

A wonderful warm feeling suffused Phryne’s whole body. “I’d be delighted, Jack. Aunt Prudence isn’t expecting me back tonight.”

“Good,” he said, with the slight half smile that said so much. “I’m expected at my cousin’s this evening, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if I brought a guest.”


	3. Reason to be Fond of Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne meets Jack's cousin and finds out once again that there's a little more to Jack than meets the eye.

Jack’s cousin Emily, the one that Phryne had been hearing about off and on for the past year, lived in Fitzroy, in a small, wonderfully cluttered house down the lane from her business premises, where she kept a photographic studio. Phryne stepped through the door and felt instantly at home.

“I’d blame it on my boys,” said Emily, a tall blond woman with a round face, wry eyes, and a familiar wide mouth, “but as they’re at boarding school for most of the year, I’m afraid I’ve no one to blame for the mess but myself.”

“No apologies necessary,” said Phryne, allowing Jack to help her out of her coat. “I know the clutter of an artist when I see one.”

Emily grinned, a broad delighted expression that encompassed Phryne, Jack, and the world in general. “I’m very glad to finally meet you. Jacky’s been rabbitting on about you for months now. About time he brought you over,” she added, giving her cousin a friendly punch on the arm.

The three of them made small talk for a few minutes, and then Emily excused herself to go finish making supper. Jack cleared a sofa of assorted magazines, contact sheets, and other detritus, and gently steered Phryne to it. “Try to relax a little,” he suggested, pouring her a whiskey from the sideboard. “You’ve been on your feet for days. I’m going to give Em a hand.” He hesitated a moment, as if steeling himself for something, but that briefest of moments gave Phryne the chance to catch his wrist.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

He tilted his head and nodded, a quiet familiar gesture that said so much, and then retreated to the kitchen.

Phryne sipped her whiskey, which was not as awful as she’d braced herself for (her experience with artistic sorts had led her to conclude that they didn’t care _what_ they drank, as long as it did the job), and let the blissful dusty domesticity wash over her. After a few minutes, she realized that if she stayed still much longer, she would fall into a sleep that not even a German barrage would wake her from, and reluctantly rose from the overstuffed sofa.

Her eyes wandered to the walls, so covered with framed portraits and family groups and landscapes that she wasn’t entirely sure what the colour of the walls was. A photograph of a small boy with large pale eyes and curls tamed by a rough hand, and dressed in the stiff formal knickers and collar of the early nineteen hundreds, gazed solemnly out at her. The same boy appeared in another picture, a little older and taller and with a small girl in white lawn at his side, stood between a seated man with pale eyes and a standing woman with a smile hiding in the corners of her lips.

_He was right,_ Phryne decided, studying the family portrait wistfully. _I think his mother and I would have liked each other very much._

Emily and Jack’s voices drifted to her ears.

“So that’s the infamous Miss Fisher. I’m glad to finally see her in person. She’s much prettier than in her newspaper pictures.” Jack grumbled something that Phryne couldn’t hear, and then Emily laughed. “Sinning above your station again, eh, Jacky? First the boss’s daughter, and now the daughter of a peer? Am I going to have to curtsy to you and call you ‘My Lord’ the next time I see you?”

“Shut up and pass me the salt,” replied Jack amiably.

“What took you so long?”

“To what?”

“To bring her round. You brought Rosie to meet everybody after six months of courting.”

At the mention of Rosie Sanderson, Phryne’s eyes seemed automatically drawn to a lovely airy studio portrait of Rosie as a very young lady, all curls and ribbons and an enormous hat. She looked about nineteen, fresh-faced and confident. Her eyes were looking off-camera. Phryne wondered if Jack had been standing behind the photographer.

“Miss Fisher and I are not _courting_ , Em,” Jack huffed. “We’re friends and... investigative partners,” he decided, with a slightly lofty tone that filled Phryne with warm amusement.

“You’re more than friends if you’re willing to inflict me on her.”

Jack sighed. “We were at her cousin’s funeral this morning. After all of that... well, I thought we could both use some more restful company.”

“And you came here?” Emily teased.

There was a silence, broken only by the sounds of vegetables being chopped and food being stirred round a sizzling pan. “I took her to visit Mum and Dad afterward,” he said finally. “And Geordie.”

There was a photograph of an infant in a tiny coffin. Phryne couldn’t bring herself to look at it.

Another silence. “Oh, Jacky,” said Emily, almost too soft for Phryne to hear. “That’s... that’s a very good friend.”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, it was with his usual light dryness. “She offered to steal me that bloody Major-General photograph you’re so protective of.”

“Over my dead body!”

“I wouldn’t suggest that in her hearing, if I were you. This hash is just about done—do you want me to set the table?”

“I’ll do it.”

Phryne grinned slightly, and moved onto a snapshot of Jack and Rosie, apparently quite recently, posing with a fair-haired boy about Jane’s age standing sullenly between them. “Is this one of your boys?” she asked as Emily reappeared in the dining room.

“No, that’s Jack’s nephew. His sister’s son. He used to spend his holidays with Jack and Rosie, sometimes.”

That was the second time that day that Phryne had heard about Jack’s mysterious sister. And yet all through the search for Foyle the year before, he had never once mentioned having the very thing that Phryne so missed and longed for. “It’s strange that he doesn’t talk about her,” she murmured, feeling a familiar ache in her heart for what was no longer there. “Has she passed on?”

Emily set down the plates she was carrying and moved closer to Phryne, speaking quietly. “She lives a few streets away from here, actually. But she and Jack…” Emily hesitated. “They’re not on speaking terms. Haven’t been for years. Jack’s tried to reconcile, but Laura… she’s not interested. He blames himself, of course.”  
  


_“It was my fault.”_

_“No. No, I can't agree. I dismiss the charges.”_

_“You can't. I lost her, Jack. I lost her.”_   
  


“I know the feeling,” said Phryne softly, as the ache in her chest grew deeper.

He had understood about Janey, just as he had understood about Arthur. Some things, she knew, would always be a mystery to him, just as he would be to her, but in essentials… they understood one another.

Jack chose that moment to reemerge from the kitchen, carrying a platter heaped with omelets and the sort of hash that got made up of everything left in the icebox at the end of the week, and it was all Phryne could do not to go to him and hug him ferociously. She restrained herself, but he looked quickly from her to Em to the portrait on the wall, and knew what they had been discussing. His jaw tightened briefly, but the expression in his eyes was one of quiet, patient pain, and complete understanding.

And Phryne loved him for that.

“I was looking for the infamous portrait of you as the Major-General,” she said lightly, teasing him with her voice while going to him and touching his hands gratefully, as she took the platter from him and set it on the table. “I’m curious to see if it even exists.”

“Oh, it exists,” said Jack, even more dryly than was his habit. “If you find it, burn it for me.”

“Not on your life, Jacky,” Em retorted, setting out plates and cutlery with a haphazard efficiency that would have made Mr. Butler cringe, but suited Phryne’s Bohemian sensibilities quite nicely. “It stays where I can keep it safe, but I’m happy to show it to your lady-friend—”

“More than happy,” he groaned, “more like wild to show it off and embarrass the hell out of me.”

“Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other,” said Em wickedly.

Phryne sat down beside Jack at the table, grasped his hand under the cloth and squeezed it hard, and laughed aloud.

“Jack,” she said, “you should have brought me round here months ago. Pass the hash.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next up:** A murder at an exclusive and _very_ discreet club brings Phryne a highly unexpected client...
> 
> _"Miss Sanderson--"_
> 
> _"Rosie, please. I need you to investigate the murder of a friend."_
> 
> _\--_
> 
> _"That is a _very_ exclusive clubs, in certain circles," said Mac._
> 
> _"...Your circles?"_
> 
> _\--_
> 
> _"I don’t know if someone taught him while he was in France or if he just discovered an innate natural talent, but he was a far better lover after the war, than he was before."_
> 
> _\--_
> 
> _"I was so young..."_
> 
> _Phryne slid her hand carefully over his. "We _all_ were." _
> 
> _\--_
> 
> _"Do you think Jack suspects?"_
> 
> _"I know you two are close, Phryne, but that’s not the sort of question you can ask a man about his ex-wife."_
> 
> _\--_
> 
> _"He was a pig. I wish I’d thought to kill him. But I didn’t."_
> 
> _\--_
> 
> _"I didn't want you involved!"_
> 
> _"Damn it, Rosie," Jack snapped, "you don’t have to protect me from myself anymore!"_


End file.
